lOI 



Rye is woitliy of attention not in the same sense as 

 clover; but principally because it being a hardy, sturdy 

 plant, which grows and keeps green more or less through 

 the entire winter, is valuable to arrest the loss of plant 

 food that is liable to occur by the action of leaching win- 

 ter rains. It is best to have some crop upon the hmd at 

 all seasons. A crop of winter rye serves to catch the com- 

 pounds of nitrogen, which would otherwise leach away and 

 be lost. 



MAINTAINING FERTILITY. 



Soil robbing never can be good husbandry. 



To be a good farmer, a man must produce paying crops, 

 and, at the same time, maintain the fertility of the land. 

 It is far cheaper and wiser to keep the soil in good heart 

 year by year than it is to impoverish it to the point where 

 it becomes absolutely necessary to manure heavily in or- 

 der to get any crop at all. 



No land is proof against continual cropping without pro- 

 poitionate restoration of plant food. This is seen plainly 

 in the case of the fertile prairies of our great West. These 

 were deemed inexhaustible in their supplies of plant food. 

 Yet, even thus earl}^ in the history of western agriculture, 

 manures and fertilizers are coming more and more into 

 use. This problem of increasing, or even maintaining fer- 

 tility, is practically the same in all sections of the country. 



To make a brief summary, the farmer, to keep his land 

 fertile, must furnish it with an abundance of capillary 

 moisture, but not soak it ; he must practice tillage with 

 persistence ; he will use all the farm manure he can get ; 

 and make up any deficiency with chemicals in so far as he 

 finds it profitable so to do. 



